Hard Rain. Darlene Scalera

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СКАЧАТЬ to the firehouse, telling himself he could handle this. Amy would recognize the name but not the man. The plastic surgery required because of his injuries had altered his features so even he had had to look twice in the mirror for a long time. She would be in Turning Point a few days at the most until the worst of the disaster was over. Then she would return to California to her life…to her husband.

      He could handle it. He’d had himself convinced. Then he’d walked into the station and looked into those eyes. Those soft turquoise eyes.

      And there, less than five feet away, was the dream that had dominated his life.

      The silence stretched out between them. Frustrated, Amy turned to the window, focusing on the Texas town passing by. She knew Turning Point, like all small towns, was defined by its inhabitants as much as by its warm creeks and catfish ponds—people who were born here, who grew up here, whose stubbornness and self-righteousness stemmed from a deep sense of place and community. She doubted that any of them, even if ordered, would head to higher grounds.

      “Is this your first time in Texas?”

      The sheriff surprised her. He did not seem one for small talk. Amy wondered if he was deliberately changing the subject. Or like her, did he need a distraction from the thoughts churning inside his head?

      “Yes, it is.”

      “Shame it’s a storm that brings you here.” He did not look at her.

      “Believe me, living on the California coast, we have more than our share of wild weather. A storm only a few months back had Courage Bay Hospital packed. Ever been to California?” She steered the conversation back to him.

      “No, ma’am.”

      “Please…” She lifted her hand to touch his bare forearm. It was the first time she’d ever hesitated. “Call me Amy.” She dropped her hand in her lap.

      “No, I’ve never been to California, Amy.”

      It was his first lie. Jesse knew there would be many more before the disaster was over.

      “Did you grow up here in Turning Point?” She continued to question him.

      He kept his profile to her. His hands gripped the wheel as if he were fighting the wind. “My family has a farm here.”

      “Lived here your whole life?” She too could have easily been making small talk.

      “I’ve seen some other parts of the world. Turning Point is home.”

      “And you’ve been sheriff here about three years?”

      “Yes, ma’am…Amy,” he corrected himself.

      “Do you like the job?”

      “Yes.”

      Amy smiled, unfazed. She was used to difficult patients. Some would even say she relished the challenge. “What do you like about it?”

      He breathed in as if suppressing a sigh. “These are good people in Turning Point. I like helping them. How ’bout you? You like being a doctor?”

      Counterstrike, she thought. “It’s all I ever wanted to do.” She’d been born with an innate need to help others, a need reinforced fourteen years ago when she’d discovered it was safer to care for others than to let someone care for you.

      His gaze shifted to her. There was something undefinable in his features. “Is being a doctor everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked quietly.

      It was not the usual question asked by someone she had known only five minutes. She didn’t answer right away, as if considering the question for the first time herself. She was competent and not without compassion, but she was cautious with her emotions. Many of her colleagues envied her detachment, a skill necessary not only for success but for survival in the medical world. Amy feared she would never love again.

      She looked at the man beside her, thought of the boy she’d loved as she studied this man who bore the same name. As if her thoughts compelled him, he looked her way. Their gazes locked.

      “Lots of things don’t turn out the way you expect them.”

      Something shifted in his eyes. The blue stone splintered. She glimpsed a longing, ageless and deep. A longing she herself had known.

      Could it be?

      He turned away, taking whatever she’d imagined with him. She turned back to the contours of the land, the ground hard from the August sun, the heat in the air as thick as fog.

      And told herself no.

      She had not acted the fool since she was eighteen. At thirty-two, she had no intention of doing so again.

      JESSE HAD FEARED he could not break the gaze. He’d seen the confusion, the plea in her expression as she’d searched his face. God help him, for a second he’d prayed. See me.

      He dragged his gaze away, saw the fresh skid marks farther up, careening from the left to the right side where the road pitched down. He slowed, saw the mid-sized car upside-down, tilted against a tree trunk. He called the accident in as he veered to the shoulder and slammed the engine into Park. Before the Bronco came to a complete stop, Jesse and Amy leapt out of the vehicle and were scrambling down the ditch’s steep slope. They heard the scream as they reached the vehicle.

      “Mommy!”

      A blond-haired girl not more than three, strapped in a safety seat, hung upside-down in the back of the car. The vehicle must have rolled over several times. The front half of the roof was creased in, and the driver’s door was crumpled. The child, seated on the opposite side, was trapped in a pocket formed between the front seat and the side of the car crushed against the tree. The child writhed against the seat constraints, terrified but appearing unharmed. An unconscious young woman was slumped half on the front seat, half on the floor, wedged in beneath the dashboard. Fluid leaking from the front of the vehicle formed a slick puddle across the ground. A thin rise of smoke snaked from the hood.

      The child screamed again.

      The car was a two-door. Jesse wrestled with the driver’s door but the mangled metal wouldn’t budge. The smoke was thickening.

      He looked around. Grabbing a large rock, he slammed it against the side window until the glass shattered. “The mother is blocking the way to the girl. We’ll get her out,” Jesse said as he crawled through the window. “Then the child.”

      Smoking engine…gas leaking from the vehicle.

      The child screamed again.

      Amy saw several small flames shoot out from beneath the front hood as Jesse pushed his way into the car. He slipped his arm beneath the woman’s arms and pulled. The woman moaned, semi-conscious, incoherent. She fought against Jesse’s grasp. Suddenly an anguished cry came from her lips. Her struggling movements stopped. The woman was injured. Fortunately her twisting and writhing indicated her spine was intact.

      “Don’t fight me. Help me,” Jesse told the woman as he pulled her from the wreckage. Small flames flared from beneath the car’s hood. He felt a resistance, saw her leg was pinned beneath the dashboard. He pulled harder СКАЧАТЬ